Focus

Mother’s death meant life for someone else

Wendy Smith
Staff Reporter

The death of my mother, though devastating, transpired into a transplant tale to pass on for generations.

On February 18th, of 2008, my mother suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage, and her doctors told our family there was little they could do for our mother.

The doctors asked us to consider organ donation, as it wouldn’t be long before we would need to make a decision.

My mother’s condition worsened over the next day, and she was declared brain dead.

On Tuesday, February 19, while being evaluated for transplant potential, my mother suffered a heart attack, but the doctors were able to resuscitate her so that her organs and tissues could still be obtained.

My mother’s death caused sadness and anger for me, new life for Craig Johnson and increased awareness of organ donation.

When I received the initial call from the hospital about my mother’s condition, I was surprised, yet something in me had been expecting this.

For years, my mother had high blood pressure and suffered three T.I.A.’s (mini strokes) that I knew of.

My sister and I repeatedly begged her to see a doctor and get medication to treat her condition.

When I walked into her hospital room and saw her lying there unresponsive and hooked up to all kinds of tubes it saddened me greatly.

As I watched my children, with tears in their eyes say goodbye to their grandma, it made my heart ache.

As time went on from one day to the next, my sadness turned to anger when I thought of what a shame this was for someone just fifty-nine years old.

Realizing my mother would miss her granddaughter’s proms, graduations and weddings along with the births of her great-grandchildren caused me to be angry because it was too early for me to lose my mother.

It was too early for my daughters to lose their grandmother. The sadness and anger I felt while sitting in her hospital room continues to this day.

My mother’s death, by an unexpected twist of fate, gave new life to Craig Johnson, a man who was suffering from a degenerative liver disease.

My husband, Steve, works with Craig’s wife, Dawn, at Waldorf College.

Five months before my mother’s death, there was an organ donor awareness night at a Waldorf volleyball game where Coach Jody Dosser spoke about organ donation in relation to her son’s tragic death.

Academic Dean Dan Hanson was present at the organ donor awareness event and learned that organs could be designated for specific recipients.

On the morning after my mother’s death, Hanson came into my husband’s office and told him of the possibility of designating organs to specific recipients and Steve immediately knew what Hanson was suggesting.

Steve called me and we arranged for the donor team at the hospital to look into the possibility of Johnson receiving my mother’s liver. Despite extremely remote odds, my mother’s liver turned out to be a perfect match for Johnson.

That night, my mother’s liver was removed and flown to Methodist Hospital in Rochester and transplanted into Johnson. That evening, my sadness and anger over my mother’s death was eclipsed by the new life given to Johnson.

My mother’s death and Johnson’s transplant tale has greatly increased awareness of organ donation.

This transplant tale has appeared in the Summit, Forest City’s newspaper, the Globe Gazette, the Des Moines Register and it went out on the Associated Press, appearing as far away as Arizona and Canada.

Jody Dosser now tells this story as part of her son’s story.

Not long after Johnson returned from the hospital, Steve, Dawn and Craig each told the story from their own perspective in a chapel series at Waldorf College.

Regularly, Steve uses this story to raise organ donor awareness in an ethics class he teaches at Waldorf.

Johnson, who never liked speaking in public, does it on a regular basis now, hoping that because of it someone else will enjoy the new gift of life as he does.

Those of us who were part of this story and who now tell it can never manage to do it without tears in our eyes, but we tell it hoping to increase awareness of organ donation.

When I received the call on February 18, 2008 about my mother, I thought her impending death would be surrounded by nothing but sadness and anger.

The events that transpired in the next few days found good coming out of bad, joy coming out of sadness and new life coming out of death.